Chapter 6 - The Unraveling Empire
Over the next three weeks, my parents' perfect empire began to completely collapse. With Richard and Eleanor locked away behind bars, the board of directors at Richard's real estate firm panicked. Shareholders began pulling out of deals, terrified of being associated with the "Desert Monsters," as the media had dubbed them.
But the real blow came from my own investigation. Using my military intelligence training, I knew that someone who could calmly abandon their own family in the desert didn't just become evil overnight. They had to have a history of ruthlessness and illegal activity.
I spent my nights sitting in a temporary apartment, digging through public financial records, tax filings, and property deeds associated with Vance Enterprises.
And then, I found it.
A series of offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands, coupled with massive, unexplained cash injections into their charity organization—the same charity Eleanor used to cement her social status. It was a classic money laundering scheme, hiding corporate real estate profits inside a non-profit organization to avoid millions in federal taxes.
I didn't take this to the local police. I took it straight to the Internal Revenue Service and the FBI.
On a Tuesday morning, a team of federal agents raided the offices of Vance Enterprises and my parents' estate, seizing every hard drive, filing cabinet, and financial ledger they could find.
I stood across the street, holding a cup of coffee, watching the federal boxes being loaded into trucks.
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My mother’s lawyer, Pendelton, arrived on the scene, looking completely defeated. He spotted me and walked over, shaking his head. "You're destroying them, Avery. There won't be anything left of their legacy when you're done."
"They destroyed their own legacy the minute they turned off my phone charger and drove away into the night," I told him calmly. "Tell them that the IRS is freezing all their assets. You might want to ask for your retainer fee upfront, because pretty soon, they won't even be able to afford a payphone."
